


How The Vagabond Fell In Love With A God

by Meganna2525



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: F/M, Fake AH Crew, Genderfluid!Gavin, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Inferiority Complex, Insecurity, It takes them years to even kiss this is ridiculous, Kinda?, M/M, Marriage, Minor Character Death, Poem? - Freeform, Slow Burn, Sun God!Gavin, Supernatural Elements, Temporary Character Death, Very Minor, and Dan, and let me know if anything else needs tagging, for Ryan, i swear it's fluffier than it sounds!!, mentioned animal death, umm... - Freeform, unnamed people biting the bullet left and right, vampire!Ryan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-24
Updated: 2018-08-24
Packaged: 2019-07-02 01:06:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15785832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meganna2525/pseuds/Meganna2525
Summary: You've never been very religious. You tried once or twice, crying out in your darkest moments for some divine intervention. But nothing came. You were just left to die. And when you awoke you grew used to your new life, if you could even call it that. You left behind the family that never cared for you and the farm that confined you and went out into the world.





	How The Vagabond Fell In Love With A God

**Author's Note:**

  * For [transvav](https://archiveofourown.org/users/transvav/gifts), [spacesix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacesix/gifts).



You've never been very religious. You tried once or twice, crying out in your darkest moments for some divine intervention. But nothing came. You were just left to die. And when you awoke you grew used to your new life, if you could even call it that. You left behind the family that never cared for you and the farm that confined you and went out into the world. Years passed in the blink of an eye. Faces blurred together. One or two of them showing up time and time again until, eventually, she approaches you.

Now you stand, covered in a Lord's blood as his widow averts her gaze. The light streams through the window and falls on her features. There is something unspeakably beautiful about her in this moment, untouched by the violence you are in the heart of. With the blood cooling on your hands, in your mouth, she finally speaks. Telling you she is a God. She speaks with such a clear certainty that you can’t help but believe her. But you have to ask why she told you. And she laughs, finally looking you in the eye, and says she thought it might be fun. In the centuries to come you become familiar with that response. You become familiar with a lot of things.

That Lord was the first gift you ever gave her and you know she keeps his heart hidden away even now, so many centuries, so many lifetimes later. The sharp smile she gave you when you presented it to her warmed your still heart. You gave her more and more gifts to try and see it again, attackers and hunters and bikers all falling before you. The sharp smile shifts into unbridled glee and you don't know which you prefer. Still, the gifts continue.

But before the second gift, before any of what is to come, she decides to follow you on your travels. Awkward curiosity turns into what might be friendship as the two of you lie under the stars and she tells you different stories for each one. You stop keeping your distance and engage her in conversation, marvelling at her questions and strange mind. But she leaves before too long and, though you travelled alone for centuries before you met her, you have never felt so lonely.

When she comes back, finding you despite the many miles you have gone and the unplanned path you have taken, you can't help but smile. She returns it, giving no explanation for where she went but falling in beside you once more. The conversation flows easier this time and she has new stories to tell. You learn of distant lands and strange magic, of things you have never even heard of before. She returns the compliment, saying that you've taught her much too and that she likes the way you tell stories. You find yourself blushing and she laughs at your bewilderment. You wish she'd never stop.

One morning you awake to find your companion with freshly-shorn hair and stern eyes. The first thing said is that he’s a boy now. You don’t really understand, but there is pain in those eyes, pain you would do anything to get rid of. His eyes soften when you use his new name and his smile is the same smile you’ve come to love.

Later he tells you this has happened before and that it may at some point happen again. You wonder if he thinks the two of you will still know each other then. If he wants that. You know you do.

Eventually he finds a town he wants to live in and settles down quickly. It isn't clear if this is goodbye or not until he's asking for your advice on the name for his new cat. And then he's asking if you like plants or not. And then he's asking for your measurements so he can get you new clothes. And months pass by like this before you are living in the house with him and not a single thought of moving on has crossed your mind, despite the vagabond lifestyle you have grown used to. You settle down too. You feed the cat and water the plants and wear the clothes and, against all the odds, you make a routine.

When he leaves again, that routine keeps you from slipping into despair. You keep the cat fed and you keep the plants watered and you putter about, completing all the odd jobs you can. Cleaning the house and mending the clothes and using the food that’s about to go off and heading out to find some more food to replace it.

When you run out of things to do you find yourself lingering by the windows in the hopes of spotting his return. You tell yourself that he came back last time and that you’d be far easier to find this time, still in the house he made with you. But every night as the sun sets it drags your heart down with it and you can do nothing but crawl back into bed and hope for sleep to take you, though it’s been just as absent as he has. And when the sun hits your back you start gathering the energy to heave yourself up and do it all over again.

One morning the sun is joined by a voice greeting you and it’s easy for you to get up, turning to stare at him. He smiles at you, standing in the door frame with the sun shining in around him, your cat pawing at his leg. You barely notice that you’ve stopped breathing until he tilts his head, calling your name as a question, and you’ve missed the way his voice wraps around your name. You finally find the words to welcome him, and when you stumble over them he laughs and the house finally feels like home again.

You end up moving around a lot, changing towns as people start to gossip about the two of you, how neither of you age. Each time you take the plants and the animals and the few possessions you refuse to give up. Each time you wander until he finds another town he wishes to live in and you settle back into your routine. Each and every time you wonder if this is when he’ll tire of you. If this is the time he’ll choose to leave and not come back, abandoning you to wait for eternity. You wonder what you’ll do if that happens. But it doesn’t. And the years go on.

The world changes rapidly around you, eventually bearing no resemblance to the one you once knew. The little farm you grew up on has no place here. He loves the changes though, adapting to them as easy as breathing and pulling you along for the ride. When photography is invented he falls in love. His first camera is a clunky thing but it means the world to him. He uses time magic to speed up the photo taking process long before humans figure out other ways around it. You ask him how the Sun God can use time magic. He talks at length about how humans perceive time and link it to the position of the sun and how his powers work in general and you struggle to follow his strange explanation. There are many things about him you find strange. When you say so he just smiles and takes a photo of you.

As time goes on you see the softer side of him more and more. You see him mourn every cat and dog the two of you outlive. You see him sing along with the birds in the morning. You see him cuddling up to you in the evening as you're reading a book. You see him stare at you in turn, whether through a camera lens or in the quieter moments when he thinks your attention is elsewhere. One evening the sun is setting and you are pretending to read, but really you're watching him watch you as he peeks up at you from where his face is pressed into your side. You've spent enough time with him now to recognise when he's struggling with something. You put the book to one side to ask him about it, but-

You think the best way to be interrupted is by his lips on yours.

Things don’t really change after that, in the same way that they do. In the same way that the world is constantly advancing but filled with the same people doing the same things. In the way that he still sings along with the birds in the morning, but pauses to cuddle into your side when he sees you’re awake. The way that those cuddles can turn into kisses which can turn into more. The way that you still argue over his strange questions, but now when he collapses into giggles you can pull him towards you and smother his laughter with your lips instead of rolling your eyes. The way that you still watch him, and he still watches you, but now neither of you hide it. The way that you still watch the stars but when the thought occurs to you that he is far more beautiful than the sprawling cosmos above you, you voice your thought and he laughs and calls you a romantic sap. In the way that life continues on the same as ever, but so much better.

The realisation you are absolutely and completely fucked, that you want this forever, comes not long later. It’s an afternoon no different from any other as he sits looking through photos he’s taken of you. His hair is long again, long enough to fall over one shoulder. The sun streams in through the window to frame him. His smile is soft. You understand why he loves photography so much, as you want nothing more than to freeze this moment and make it last forever. You change your mind quickly, however, as pictures can’t turn that same soft smile on you, can’t reach out to you and croon your name.

Then he leaves, as he is wont to do. But this is the first time he has left since your kiss and his absence stings. You try to fall back into your usual routine again, looking after the plants and the animals, trying to placate them as they curl up on his side of the bed and make pitiful noises despite the fact you know they can’t understand you. This time you are tempted to join them, to lie in the bedsheets that still smell of him and close your eyes and wait for him. But you know it will change nothing, so you push yourself to continue on until his return. As always you greet him with a smile, though this time you pull him close and bury your nose in his neck to breathe his scent in. It settles something within you. He holds you just as close and all is well.

The two of you move on again, the usual gossip now remarking on the peculiar closeness between you, but that seems to be the only difference and you again end up deep in the woods, wondering where to go next. America has been around for awhile but you haven’t paid it much mind, far more concerned with your little home than the wars it finds itself entrenched in. Travelling there to start a new life is his idea, as many things are, and you agree. You’d follow him anywhere.

The night before your boat leaves you go to a clear spot in the woods to watch the stars. When there’s a lull in the conversation you pull a ring from your pocket, one of the few things to have followed you through the centuries. Another stands before you, and you hope he will follow you for many more to come, just as you’ll follow him. The kiss he gives you is full of such searing intensity that you can feel the sun burning within him.

The next day he gives you a ring and you don’t ask where it came from. It shines, reflecting the sun even though you’re inside. You kiss him again and the two of you begin your new life.

It’s a few years later when he sits himself before you with an expectant air and you place your book down. Boredom is a terrible affliction, he tells you. You do not disagree. As such he resolves to make things interesting. You ask what he has in mind. He grins.

You become his next project as he pushes you out into both the spotlight and the shadows, model and criminal. He molds both faces, both masks, with ease. The new worlds he flings you into would be overwhelming if not for his presence. Standing behind the camera, talking in your ear, holding your hand. You hold on tight and let him take you wherever he pleases.

But you are not the only thing he changes. He drapes himself in gold, the ring you gave him hiding amongst it in plain sight. But he never takes it off. As his work in information shifts and he spends more and more time in other people’s beds he never takes it off. Every time, before he leaves, he asks if you still love him. And every time when he comes home he takes off every piece of gold but that ring and you can breathe again. He climbs into bed beside you and nuzzles into you, apologising for everything he does. Assures you people like that are just playthings to him. But not you. Never you. You don’t respond.

Though you are the one known for your mask, he has many more. His masks are his lives, each one different and each one as much a lie as the skull which cloaks your visage. You wonder, sometimes, if you really know all of them. One night as he apologises you ask him and he tells you yes. He tells you that you are the one person he has shown every side of himself to, that there is not a single secret he’d keep from you. He tells you this with such certainty that it quells your fears and in turn you silence his apologies with a kiss.

It is not long later that he leaves, but this time he brings you with him. It feels like an apology, an attempt to make up. You are introduced to a childhood friend and put aside your momentary surprise that he had a childhood at all to look over this man. This B. You don’t know what to make of him.

It takes a few days before you finally manage to get some answers and a better understanding of his friend, your husband having left the two of you alone for a few hours. It still takes a while for you to break the silence, asking a mundane question about the weather of all things, awkwardness clear. He snorts. From there the conversation flows somewhat easier, though one of the first things he tries to make clear is his stance on ‘your kind’. Vampires. You start placating him, assuring him that you’d never hurt your husband, but he waves that aside. What he’s more concerned about, he says, is your mortality. You are startled, not used to having that word leveled at you. He continues, pointing out that, though you live longer than humans, you will still die. And can be killed by others. Soon enough he confesses that he used to be human, long before civilisation really existed, and that his death broke your husband so completely that he brought him back. Made him immortal so that he’d never be alone again. You can’t find any hint of bitterness in his expression but your heart feels heavy. You find yourself watching your husband when he returns, thoughts swirling.

You and he have talked about having kids once or twice. You're apprehensive, not wanting to turn out like the father who led to your death. He was always equally so, but for a different reason. I don’t want to have a child knowing I will outlive it, he told you once. But it seems just as cruel to inflict immortality upon someone.

When the two of you leave his friend and return to your own life you bring it up again. Prodding. Curious to know why he would feel that way when his friend had already forgiven him, if he was even upset in the first place. His gaze is distant. He does not answer. You cradle his face to bring him back to you and agree not to bring it up again. It doesn't stop you from watching the families around you with their children. Nor does it stop you from noticing the wistfulness in his gaze as he watches too.

One day you get a request to join a crew. He urges you to accept, so of course you do. And you find it fun to interact with these people. Loath though you are to admit it, you enjoy having people in your life who aren’t him. Even if they treat you with suspicion. With fear. As they start to see through the mask they still keep their distance, marvelling at your so-called depravity and tiptoeing around you in a way that almost reminds you of how you acted around him when he first followed you. The implication that they see you as something other or inhuman almost makes you want to laugh. It seems incomprehensible to you, as your crimes have always been, at the core of them, human. You wonder how they'd react to what he can accomplish, the beauty he spins from chaos otherworldly. His pride when he shows it off reminds you that he is not, nor has he ever been, like you.

It's harder to remember when he's sat on the floor, swimming in your shirt and cooing at your newest cat. Or when he's curled up in your side, cursing out a video game for being so unfair. Or when he decides that he wants to dance and pulls you along with him as he hums, even though it's the middle of the night and you just want to sleep. But it's never hard to remember why you love him.

Just as you’ve settled into the crew he barges in, carving his own place among them with ease. They react with curiosity, but before long you can tell they adore him. You can’t blame them. It is funny, however, the way they try to keep him away from you. Believing that you could ever be a threat to him. He watches with a smile full of the same amusement, like some inside joke. Look at them, it says, look at how cute they are. How human. It isn’t long before his looks change from amusement into love, so intense you’re half-certain the objects of his affection might burn up beneath them. You wonder when he started looking at you that way. You wonder what else you haven't noticed about him.

Eventually you come to consider them family. A word that used to mean nothing to you, carrying connotations of duty and death. Now you’ve learnt a different side to it. Yes duty, but also passion and joy and loyalty and life. So when he wants to come clean to them, to tell them everything, you agree. But you ask if you can be the one to tell them of your marriage. You want to show them the trust that they first extended to you, and the best way you can think to do so is to show them your heart. They laugh initially, wondering how the big, bad Vagabond managed to get caught by some scrawny little Brit. You struggle to tell them that the Vagabond, James, just Ryan, that all of them have always been his, to tell them of your constant wonder that he is, in any way, yours. You have always struggled to find the right words to convey just how much you adore him, how you'd do anything for him, how you'd follow him anywhere. Marriage doesn't quite describe it. The closest you can come is worship.

But then, you've always been rather religious. Wearing your ring around your neck like a cross. Whispering your thoughts to him in the dead of night like they were prayers. Keeping faith in him even when he’s nowhere to be found. How he saved you when you thought you were beyond saving. You would mount any crusade for him because he is, and always has been, Your God.

**Author's Note:**

> So, this has been a long time in the making. I first started writing this Sept 2017 - nearly a whole year, wow - and almost gave up more than a few times, but now it's finally finished! Overall, I'd say I'm happy with what I've done. There may be some things I think could do with tweaking here and there, but I'll probably never be completely satisfied with it. And now I can devote myself to other projects! Which should be fun!!
> 
> Thank you to transvav and spacesix again for inspiring me in the fandom, and special thanks to my sister for being a much appreciated beta reader! All three of you are wonderful and I hope you enjoy the finished product!!
> 
> ...
> 
> I don't really think there's much else to say. Hope you enjoyed reading it!!


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